OVERDroidDeck 0.5.0: SteamVR on Quest, XR glasses, a smarter GPU driver page and smoother frame pacing
DroidDeck, the app that runs a SteamOS-style Steam session on Android, has shipped version 0.5.0. It is the project's biggest release so far. The headline features are VR and smart-glasses support, but handheld owners will get more out of the performance and driver changes further down the changelog.
VR and XR glasses
The standard APK now runs SteamVR on Meta Quest 3 and 3S, with headset tracking, Touch controllers and haptics. Quest 2 support is experimental. On phones and handhelds, DroidDeck supports VITURE Pro XR, RayNeo Air and GT, and XREAL 1S glasses (XREAL is experimental). Games play on the glasses at their own refresh rate, and glasses with head tracking can show a head-tracked virtual screen. There is also a Cardboard-style split-screen VR mode using Valve's ARM64 SteamVR.
What's new for handhelds
- Smoother frame pacing: sessions now respect Android's peak refresh rate and time frames to vsync. On a 60Hz AYN Thor, distinct frames on screen rose from about 49.5 to 59.4 per second in the developers' testing.
- Odin 3 tuning: a game's busiest threads are moved onto the Odin 3's prime cores, and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 devices get default core assignments.
- Flicker fix: Android UI flickering during games on Adreno 740 devices such as the AYN Thor and Odin 2 Portal is fixed.
- New GPU drivers page: choose Auto, Matched pair, or Mix and match for display and runtime drivers. Auto checks for new drivers at launch and rolls back to the last working pair if a new one fails to start a session.
- Back paddles: controllers with two back paddles map them to the Deck's L4 and R4.
- Faster SD cards: games on SD-card libraries launch about 46% faster in testing.
- Less memory pressure: an optional zRAM mode frees roughly 0.5 to 0.8GB while a game runs. An idle Steam session also uses about 30 processes instead of 41.
Steam, Linux games and stores
An optional x86-64 Steam client (Valve's Linux client running under FEX) can now sit beside the default ARM64 one, so games with Linux versions can run those builds. Proton Experimental ARM64, FEX and the Steam Linux Runtimes now download on first start, and x86 Linux games, including Unity titles, run under FEX out of the box. Epic and Amazon store support has been rewritten, and Epic installs no longer need roughly double the game's size in free space. GOG and Epic game pages now show HowLongToBeat times and Metacritic scores, and GOG achievement syncing is available as an opt-in. The app is translated into 32 languages besides English.
Why it matters
DroidDeck is quickly turning into one of the most complete ways to play your Steam library locally on an Android handheld. The frame-pacing and driver-rollback work tackles two of the most common complaints: games that feel juddery even at a good average frame rate, and driver updates that break things. As always, run it on games you own. If you test it on your device, submit a report so other owners can copy your settings. You can find the official download link on our emulators hub.